Maingear has officially announced its latest small form factor (SFF) gaming system, the SPARK, which is based on AMD's quad-core A8-5557M APU and packs an R9 M275X dedicated graphics card.

Measuring just 114.3x107.4x59.4mm (4.5x4.23x2.34-inches), the new Maingear SPARK packs quite a punch for its size. The heart of the Maingear SPARK is AMD's quad-core A8-5557M Richland APU clocked at 2.1GHz base and 3.1GHz Turbo clocks. The A8-5557M APU packs Radeon HD 8550G integrated GPU with 256 Stream Processors. It has a TDP of 35W.

In addition to the intergrated GPU inside the APU, the SPARK also features AMD Radeon R9 M275X GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The R9 M275X GPU is part of AMD's R9 M200 series and has 10 Compute Units for 640 Stream Processors, 40 TMUs and 16 ROPs. It is usually connected to 2GB of GDDR5 memory via 128-bit memory interface. According to AMD's official details, it is clocked at up to 925MHz for the GPU and 1125MHz (4500MHz) for the memory.

The rest of the Maingear SPARK specifications are not bad either as it has two SO-DIMM memory slots for up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory, one mSATA slot with support for up to 512GB SSD and one 2.5-inch SATA 6Gbps slot for HDD/SSD, Gigabit Ethernet via Realtek RTL8111G chip, Realtek ALC269 audio, integrated 802.11ac DualBand WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 in half-size mPCIe slot, HDMI and mini DisplayPort outputs and four USB 3.0 ports.

Maingear's SPARK comes without OS and and gives you an option to either go for Linux or Valve's SteamOS, although we are quite sure that Microsoft's Windows 8.1 will work just fine as well.

The price of the Maingear SPARK starts at US $699 and includes four free games valued at $200 from AMD's Reward program. Unfortunately, Maingear's systems are reserved for the US only, but in Europe you can get the Gigabyte BRIX instead, which is more or less the same.

After a few audio presentations and game trailers, Maingear boss Wallace Santos took to the stage to discuss AMD’s new products.

Maingear needs no introduction – it is one of the first names that comes to mind when we think insanely powerful gaming PCs. Santos noted that AMD’s involvement in consoles will be the end of crappy console ports.

He used his brief appearance to showcase a new version of the Shift, the first Maingear system to include R9 GPUs. It can handle up to three Radeon cards and thanks to its Epic 180 closed-loop cooling technology, overlocking should not be an issue.

The Shift comes in any automotive colour you can imagine and new R9 versions will be available over the next few weeks. You can check out the product page here.

It is unarguable that Intel's 32nm Sandy Bridge-E enthusiast desktop processors were one of the most welcomed performance hardware upgrades of 2011. From a performance scaling perspective, a significant portion of last year was plagued down with technological recession and a confusing variety of product refreshes from the information technology sector at large, leaving number-crunching diehards a bit unsatisfied and disconcerted.

Nevertheless, several high-end notebook vendors have sought to restore the excitement and gratitude that Intel's 32nm Sandy Bridge-E desktop platform brought performance enthusiasts in the last quarter of 2011. This week, vendors Clevo, Eurocom and MAINGEAR are all proud to have launched new Desktop-Replacement (DTR) notebooks with the options of Intel Core i7 Extreme 3960X and Intel Core i7 3930K Sandy Bridge-E processors, respectively.

Clevo P270WM

Clevo has released a platform-refresh to its flagship X7200 gaming notebook, which was based on the aging Intel X58 platform and sported an LGA 1366 socket for use with Intel's Nehalem lineup. Out with the old and in with the new, the company now has an Intel X79-based successor with an LGA 2011 socket called the Clevo P270WM gaming notebook. Clevo is preparing to ship this new notebook with options for up to two Nvidia Geforce GTX 580M's in SLI or a 4GB Nvidia Quadro 5010M, up to 32GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory, three USB 3.0 ports and the choice of an Intel Core i7 Extreme 3960X or Core i7 3930K.

The base model starts at $3,000 and pre-orders from have just begun this week from AvaDirect.

Eurocom Panther 4.0

Canada-based Eurocom Corporation has also introduced its new Intel X79-based Desktop Replacement (DTR) flagship notebook, dubbed the Eurocom Panther 4.0. The company is preparing to ship this beast of a computing device with options for up to two Nvidia Geforce GTX 580M's in SLI, two AMD Radeon HD 6990M's in CrossFireX or a 4GB Nvidia Quadro 5010M, up to 64GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory, three USB 3.0 ports and the choice of an Intel Core i7 Extreme 3960X or Core i7 3930K.

Eurocom has yet to reveal customization-based pricing options for the Panther 4.0, but the new model is expected to start shipping on Thursday, March 15th.

MAINGEAR Titan 17

Our friends over at MAINGEAR have also launched their own Intel X79-based Desktop Replacement (DTR) gaming notebook, dubbed the MAINGEAR Titan 17. This new model also packs a competitive punch, with options for up to two Nvidia Geforce GTX 580M's in SLI, up to 32GB of quad-channel DDR3 memory, three USB 3.0 ports (one of which is a powered eSATA / USB 3.0 combo port) and the choice of an Intel Core i7 Extreme 3960X or Core i7 3930K.

MAINGEAR's customization-based pricing for the Titan 17 begins at $3499 and the notebooks are expected to start shipping on Monday, March 12th.